In 2010, Cambridge University Press published KANT'S THEORY OF VIRTUE, by Anne Margaret Baxley, of Washington University, St. Louis. Kant of course is generally considered the foremost exponent in the western canon of deontological ethics, the view that good and bad are subordinate to right and wrong, and hat right/wrong are defined by duties, imperatives, things human beings as rational creatures must or cannot do, damning the consequences. Baxley says, though, that Kantian thinking goes beyond that. Kant has a worked-out view of human character, or virtue, logically separate from his well-known view of duty, We generally associate "virtue ethics" with Aristotle, just as we associate deontology with Kant and consequentialism with Bentham. If one were going to teach a very abbreviated ethics course, one might focus it on those three, and then if allowed time for a fourth, throw in John Stuart Mill and his differences with Bentham to show that consequentialisms ar...
